Recently, I spent the day with a client’s board and various other stakeholders hashing out the strategy for their education business. This is an organization in a highly competitive learning market – lots of companies and individuals course entrepreneurs competing for business.

It was a situation where it would be easy to think that investing heavily in technology or producing the best possible courses would win the day. But, really, everyone in the market is pursuing this approach to the greatest extent possible. It is, as one astute board member put it, “table stakes” at this point.

There are, of course, some competitors in this market who will take the low price approach, but that wasn’t a strategy that made sense for my client (any more than it does for most education producers).

If you have read much of what I’ve written on online course platforms, you know I am mostly not a fan of the approach offered by platforms like Udemy and its alternatives – what I call the “market maker” business model.

The gist of this model is that one company – basically, a “landlord” – creates a market place in which individual course producers or other companies – basically, “tenants” – can sell their courses, usually in exchange for paying the landlord a share of the revenue.

Now, if you happen to be the landlord – as Udemy is – this model is fantastic. You create a highly-scalable content engine that generates a continuous revenue stream. If you are the tenant, on the other hand, this model usually limits your options in a number of ways, including: [Read more…]

Online course failure. I was prompted to write about this topic because of a conversation I had recently with the financial director at an organization that is not getting good sales results for its online courses. The critical part of the conversation went something like this: [Read more…]